When shipping various objects it may be necessary to protect a portion of the object from damage such as from environmental factors such as rain or snow. For relatively small objects, the objects may be placed in shipping containers. Larger objects may be placed into transport vehicles such as a truck or trailer that protects the object.
Even larger objects that may not fit into an enclosed transport vehicle may be partially covered such as with a tarp. One such class of relatively large objects that do not fit into conventional enclosed transport vehicles are components for wind towers that are used to generate electricity using the wind.
Because the wind towers are designed to withstand exposure to environmental factors, the external surfaces are not susceptible to damage from environmental factors such as rain or snow while the components of the wind tower are being transported to the use location.
However, because of the size of the wind towers that are used for large scale electricity generation, it is not possible to ship the wind towers in an assembled configuration. Rather, the wind tower is shipped in several components that are dimensioned to be transported using conventional transport vehicles such as semi trailers, which minimizes the need to obtain special permits or to adjust the transportation route because of size restrictions.
When the wind tower components are separated, there are interior regions of the wind tower components, which are exposed and thereby subject to damage from environmental factors. To minimize the potential of damage to the interior regions, protective covers are placed over the wind tower components. Because of the diameter of the wind tower components, the protective covers may have relatively large dimensions.
The protective covers must have sufficient strength to withstand the forces encountered as the wind tower components are transported to the use location. While these protective covers may be relatively expensive to manufacture, they heretofore have been discarded after the wind tower components are delivered.